Happy Valley and a Divergence in Strategy

Yesterday, members of the Save Happy Valley Coalition organised a 69m banner drop across two cranes in Wellington port. Ten days of preparation went off fairly well (only a few issues with the unfurling), and incredibly they managed to convince both the Police and the Port Authorities that they were allowed to be there. Apparently, the Port Authorities have so many departments that each believed the other had OK’ed the banner.

This was, however, the first action of SHVC that I refused to get involved in. Half way through 2006, a friend and I co-wrote An Anarchist Position Paper on the campaign to save Happy Valley. We charged the campaign — ourselves included — of remaining trapped within the limits of liberal environmentalism and that a re-evaluation of tactics and strategy in all areas of the campaign was required. It was met with largely hostile reception.

Our main argument was that political lobbying had to be stopped, and that a strategy of direct action was the only tactic left. We argued this from both very pragmatic and long-term angles. Pragmatic in the sense that every possible legal and political barrier had been cleared by state-owned mining company Solid Energy:

We have reached a point where both the political (ie. lobbying) and legal avenues have been exhausted. The Resource Consents process, the Environmental Court and the High Court have all legitimised the destruction of Happy Valley and the Department of Conservation has actively facilitated this process.

Many within the campaign held onto the success of the Native Forest Action campaign in 1999 that brought about the cessation of native forest logging. However, as we also saw with the anti-GE campaign, these conditions were simply not reproducible under a Labour Government:

[The failure of the anti-GE campaign] was primarily because a purportedly left-wing government was seeking re-election. As left-wing governments defend attacks from the right, discourse generally becomes more and more right wing, such that at the time of the 2003 elections no major party, besides the Green party, believed G.E. to be an issue. As such, public opinion was not a serious threat to Labour’s power.

And of course there is the long-term anarchist position with regards to lobbying, best summed up by a friend of mine:

I can’t speak for others of course, but I don’t want to lobby because I’ve done it before for NFA, forests campaigns, the Bypass, GE, marine reserves, Treaty issues etc. etc., and it always ends up as us begging them (council/govt) to do what we want, which immediately puts the decisions back in their hands and reinforces their power over us… which as an anarchist and a maori (whose ancestors refused to sign the treaty and were therefore imprisoned, beaten, raped and murdered) I refuse to acknowledge their power over me, my community and ‘our resources’.

And while sometimes the govt/council are forced to do what we ask of them, normally this is because of their own needs for power which they use us to acquire for them. This is why NFA won and it should be known (and where is NFA now?). Take the seabed & foreshore, the Bypass or GE as other examples where mass public support and lobbying have been used but the govt/council did not need us to gain/retain power. We were just ignored.

Despite the reception of our position piece, the last national SHVC hui (meeting) saw us overwhelmingly agree that, indeed, direct action and economic costing was the best pathway. What remained was to work out the best forms of direct action we could use, and the best ways to enable mass participation in effective direct action.

This is why I was rather stunned to see, once again, a mere media stunt that risked arrests and required significant energy proposed at the end of December. And it turns out that even in this respect it predictably failed: banner drops are old news and it received little to no mainstream coverage in the press.

I guess I’ve also come to realise the role this campaign plays within the wider scheme of things. While in the position paper we argued that the form of this campaign was what could make it have long-term revolutionary potential, I’ve now realised that it is in fact a thumb-in-the-dam campaign, a defensive campaign with little constructive opportunities besides building a culture of direct action. And that, while we can still win, the prospects for undermining the structural causes of environmental destruction lie elsewhere, for example in popular organisations that threaten capitalist relations and which are organised around people’s immediate needs and not, as it turns out, in purely environmental campaigns.

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anarchafairy

These are my musings, take them as they are.

I'm from Te Whanganui a Tara, Aotearoa. My main project is publishing radical literature from the deep South Pacific as part of Rebel Press, and also the irregular anarchist journal imminent rebellion.

i reckon u should stop ‘anal-ysing’ and telling us free thinking anarchists what to do with our time. do it yourself and stop being critical. maybe try inspiring me with your actions instead of packing a sad when i don’t follow your authoritian commands. all this hot air and no action is further contributing to climate change.

Thanks for your constructive comments there, Tara. If you must know, at that meeting where the banner idea was put forward, I tried to bring people around to a quite different set of actions (which I shouldn’t post here) but failed to get support. It’s rather hard to do much when all those “free thinking anarchists” are busy making themselves pretty for the media and politicians.

so find groups of people who you do agree with and work with them. its so much easier to sit back and criticise than to actually get involved and lead actions. i’m not stopping you from taking other actions involving happy valley, full power to you. just go out and do them. use your own creativity. i think you might limit your actions because you are afraid of others criticising you. this maybe comes from your own overly critical thought patterns? just a thought. please, for others wellbeing as well as your own, free yourself.

i hope from this dialogue that we both go out to do creative effective action to stop a coal mine going on at happy valley.

While I largely agree with your analysis, I think you are underestimating the importance of public support. You say that “Public support does not translate in any direct form to social change, and in and of itself will not win this campaign. This form of lobbying [passive support] is a carryover from liberal campaigning…”. While it won’t win your campaign by itself, it is utterly important as a basis for any actions. Public support is the very thing that stops the state from applying its anti-terrorist legislation to people who chain themselves to railroad tracks and cause economic damage. Without wanting to compare their actions to those of SHVC, take a look at the fate of the red army faction, brigatta rossa, revolutionary cells, etc. for the extreme opposite example.

Them vs us, us vs them: if we can’t argue about the issues, then we will argue amongst ourselves. To be honest, I have found that the biggest obstacle in the SHVC campaign is not fighting Solid Energy, but fighting for ideology. Having spent the last year within the Wellington group, I have come to the decision that the campaign, devastatingly, is going nowhere. That is not because there are not incredibly smart, dedicated and talented campaigners working within the group, but because certain arguments about ideology have dominated discussions: isolating activists, undermining personal priniples, and created gaping divisions between ideas of strategy and tactics. I am not suggesting that these issues should not be raised or discussed, but I do not agree that they should take dominance in a campaign which is founded on the goal of stopping a coal mine. I do not want to look as if I am suggesting that these are not important issues, I totally disagree with the way they have evolved within the SHVC campaign.

I too was at the meeting where this particular action was being discussed (or at least one of the meetings), and though I had personal reservations about the goal and planning of the action, I saw nothing but keen, passionate people wanting to make a statement and DO SOMETHING about the issue, and with that in mind, I totally supported their enthusiasm. I have a hard enough time trying to convice people I know who are not activists or environmentalists that they have power to do something about an issue that they are upset about, so I think that it is so damaging to criticise people who are honestly and unselfishly trying to do something about something they care about, if only because I don’t think that it fits within my personal philosophical dogma. ‘If you’re causing no harm, you’re alright by me…’

The problem I have encountered within this campaign, however, is that it is not enough to wax lyrical about what underlying politcal (or anti-political) theme should drive the campaign, but the apparent bitter and abrasive disrespect that some have for others who do not share a particlar ideology, or seem to share it. I acknowledge that this has been felt equally from both ‘sides’, though I think that neither ‘camp’ has a more legimate claim than the other to feeling marginalised. I am not personally attacking anyone, this is just how I see it.

Do we all share a common ground? For the future of this campaign, and its conceivable win, we should find one, and then get on with it.

I should stress that the position paper we wrote was from the start and always a critique of tactics, strategies and existing ideologies, NOT of people. We have said constantly that it was as much a critique of ourselves as anyone else in the campaign. We have argued the tactics and the ideas, but in return we have only been met with criticism of ourselves. Stopping a coal mine requires constant discussion of tactics and strategy, and this should be an evolving discussion alongside the campaign.

What I’ve learnt, however, is that people do not take well to criticism at all, even if it is just against tactics. With regards to the most recent bannerdrop, I also took a position “If you’re causing no harm, you’re alright by me…”, and said I’d opt out of the action. But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reflect on the effectiveness of these actions, based on how much time they require, money they use, risk they pose for arrests and where they fit into a wider strategy. Unfortunately, rather than reflecting on where we are and what we’re doing I am told to be silent, that it is damaging to the campaign, etc. etc.

And you wonder why this campaign is so directionless? Trust me, it’s not because of discussions about ideology, etc, but its been a problem from the start because we have been so reluctant to really think clearly about direction. The most recent hui finally did come up with a campaign strategy, but alas that effort seems as though it is going to be ignored.

I’d like to discuss and critique the tactics we use and yet, instead, I find myself defending the merits of having that discussion at all.

P.S. This is the first tiny bit of criticism I have made with regards to the campaign since I gave up repeating myself in defence of the position paper perhaps a month after it was put out there. In actuality, there hasn’t been much criticism of this campaign at all.

Yeah, I agree that public support can act as a defence against the State… but I think this is also limited.

When we propose direct action, however, most people imagine images of small covert groups doing hardcore actions, which I think you are right could lead to the isolation groups like the RAF experienced. Instead, I think large overt groups doing effective but relatively safe direct action is probably better – it not only is effective, but it brings people into the campaign, makes it harder for any single person to be targeted and also looks quite good from a media angle. That’s why we stress direct action that is tailored towards mass participation: the occupation is one example, mass road blockades could be another.

the true measure of your ideas comes, mr scarfface, when you stop talking about what others should be doing and do something yourself – thus converting your talk into walk.

it seems from your ‘profile’ that you might live in an insular ‘activist’ community and spend too much time preaching to the converted… in my experience it is this approach to activism that prevents mass participation…precious idealogues and big talkers scaring away enthusiastic newcomers.

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